If you spend more than 20 minutes on a gallery crawl in Tribeca, Bloomsbury, or Kreuzberg, you’re likely to overhear someone talking in hushed tones about the worrying state of the art market.
But such doom-and-gloom threatens to overshadow another equally relevant truth: The past five years have seen a flourishing new crop of ambitious galleries taking root in cities around the globe. The pandemic ushered in a wave of experimentation, of why-not-now, that has enriched the art world tremendously. Some arts workers moved back to their hometowns and decided to take advantage of lower rents to open their first galleries; others haggled, bartered, scrimped, and saved in order to afford a space in more established commercial art hubs.
Young dealers play an essential role in the art ecosystem, scouting artists who often have not yet developed steady markets and building careers from the ground up. In many ways, the entire rest of the market hinges on their willingness to take risks.
To select the group of gallerists comprising CULTURED’s first Young Dealers List, we reached out to more than 40 collectors, advisors, and curators to find out where they look to discover new talent. From over 100 recommendations, we narrowed our first edition to 23 galleries, all younger than five years old. They represent a broad (although in no way exhaustive) range of geographies, a distinct point of view, and a shared commitment to elevate artists they believe in.
House of Seiko
Founders: Cole Solinger and Nicolas Torres
Founded: 2023
Location: San Francisco and Los Angeles
Since 2023, House of Seiko has highlighted the Bay Area’s artistic legacy, particularly its undersung. Recent shows of the late local illustrator and painter Arthur Okamura and the Surrealist Ariel Reynolds Parkinson, says co-founder Cole Solinger, “speak to my love for the visionary in corners that are perhaps forgotten.” With nearby bar owner Nicolas Torres, he opened the gallery in a former Mission District watch store, having studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and previously worked at SFMOMA, Altman Siegel, and the project space Delaplane. A former sign painter, Solinger saw the name House of Seiko hand-painted above the door and knew he had to keep it. The gallery’s new Angeleno outpost, in East Hollywood, opens June 14 with a show of works by Chris Lux. –Janelle Zara
What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done to save money for your business?
I kind of sort of lived secretly above a bar that is next to the gallery in the first year that it was open. San Francisco is so expensive, and I just needed to be nearby.
If you could stage a show with any two artists, dead or alive, who would you pick?
It’s a tie. For the dead, Lutz Bacher and Wallace Berman. Berman’s the perfect character to stitch together that specific era of history between San Francisco and Los Angeles. And Lutz is incredibly influential—a legend who worked in San Francisco her whole career. The satire in her work is so intelligent and elegantly presented. You don’t see that often, and when you do it’s a gift. The living would be Trisha Donnelly and Jason Dodge.
What would you like to see more of and what would you like to see less of in the art world?
I want to see more meaningful conversations and risk-taking on all sides, and less investment buying.